Chechnya

Chechnya is a federal subject of Russia, located in the North Caucasus region of Eastern Europe. The capital of Chechnya is Grozny, and the republic had a population of 1,268,989 people in 2010, with almost all of them being Sunni Muslims.

Chechnya first had contact with Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the Russian Empire conquered Chechnya and the warlike peoples of the North Caucasus in a long war in the Caucasus mountains. Chechnya gained independence in September 1991 at the end of the Soviet Union, but it refused to join the Russian Federation, instead declaring that it was the independent Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Russia failed to conquer Chechnya in the 1994-1996 First Chechen War, but in 2000 Chechnya voted to join Russia in rigged elections held as Russian troops reoccupied the country in the Second Chechen War of 1999-present. Akhmad Kadyrov and his son Ramzan Kadyrov served as presidents, and they fought against the separatist Chechen rebels, their Islamist comrades (backed by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State), and rival Chechen politicians to maintain power as a pro-Moscow regime. Since 2000, there has been an intense guerrilla war against the government and its Russian allies by the Caucasus Emirate and jihadists led by Dokka Umarov, among others, assisted by al-Qaeda and foreign mujahideen who waged jihad against the Christian Russians. This led to several terrorist attacks, notably the Moscow theatre hostage crisis and the Beslan school hostage crisis.